Bloodroot (39 page)

My brain worked overtime on the past but my body betrayed me in the present. I tripped over a tree root and, stumbling off the trail and into the brush, rolled my ankle. Limping back onto the trail, I tried forcing my brain to defer the pain and file the accident away for future reference, but the future proved to be about six steps away. My chest heaved, granules of glass burning my lungs at every breath. Why had I started smoking again? When had this trail gotten so fucking long?

Finally, I spilled head over heels out of the woods and into the graveyard just like I had the last time I’d met Danny there, knocking the last of the breath from my lungs. My heart beat into the earth like it wanted to break free and burrow away and hide. Was this how it would go down? Me on my face gasping like an old man with heart failure, my brother only three hundred feet and a few flights of stairs away, shooting his life to hell?

Prone in the grass, I gathered what new air I could. I struggled to my feet and climbed over the wall. Hobbling now, I jogged across the graveyard and up the hill to Bloodroot. Heavy clouds, outlined in fire, moved over the sun. The eerie, marigold glow of a false sunset settled over the field. Shadows oozed down the walls of the asylum like spilled ink. I had no flashlight to guide me through the building. I started running again, wincing in pain every time my ankle hit the ground. If things did go to hell, it wouldn’t be because I gave up.

I ducked under the boards over the front door and wandered into the lobby, calling my brother’s name. No surprise, he didn’t answer. I limped across the tile. The Vandals and Goths had been at it again. The place reeked of burnt things, the odor rank enough to make my eyes water and to make me wish for one of Al’s cologne-soaked bandannas. I covered my mouth and nose with my hand. It didn’t help much. My hand stank of old cigarettes.

I started up the stairs, leaning on the greasy railing with my free hand, keeping what weight I could off my leg.

Walking the halls, peering into the labs and shouting Danny’s name, I found nothing. Frustrated, I tried to be grateful that I hadn’t tripped over Whitestone’s dead body. I stopped on the landing of the third floor, leaning on the wall to give my ankle a break. Moldy paint flaked off the walls everywhere I touched. I tried to catch my breath but all I did was choke. The higher I climbed through the building the worse the burning smell became. Acidic and sweet, it burned like chemical steam. Alcohol. Formaldehyde. Heroin simmering in a black spoon.

I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes. If I was going to find Danny, I had to stop thinking like me and start thinking like him. Danny had cracked wise about justice before running out of the apartment. That’s what had brought me to Bloodroot.

In Danny’s brain, this hell house was the only logical place to bring a man he’d caught victimizing children. My brother could say what he wanted about protecting those kids, but he always took something for himself. He wouldn’t miss the chance to strike down some of his own phantoms, even if it had to be by proxy. Once he was here, then, what was the next step? I’d already come up empty in the labs. The room where that picture had been taken? The one he showed me at our folks’ house? I had no idea where that was. I could’ve been through it already. No. Not there. His old room. Where he’d first heard that terrible scratching that still haunted his nights.

I began my long trek up the stairs, the awful fumes settling like fog over my throat and into my stomach.

As I neared the top floor, I wondered if what I was inhaling was getting to my head. I heard strange scratchings, bumpings, and chirpings in the walls all around me, above me in the ceiling. I ignored the noises, trying not to think about what made them. When I made the top floor, I didn’t even bother calling for my brother. He was either in that room or he wasn’t. And if that room was empty, I was out of ideas.

Nearing the end of the hall, I heard something else over the sounds in the walls, sounds that told me I’d picked the right place to look. A grown man was softly crying, fighting for breath and words as sobs broke apart his voice. Another voice, unintelligible, spoke in stern, definite tones. Whitestone and Danny, with Al standing silent watch.

Outside Danny’s old room, I stopped, pinned myself against the wall. Should I announce myself so that Al didn’t shoot me on sight? I licked my lips but my brother’s name died in my throat. I couldn’t imagine what I was about to see. How would I not see it again every time I closed my eyes? I turned the corner.

The room was empty.

Impossible.

I turned circles in place, balancing on my good leg. There was no place to hide, no closets, no anterooms. The room was too small, the sunlight still strong enough to reveal the corners. I hadn’t hallucinated those voices. I had followed them here. I still heard them. Something low on the wall caught my eye, a wet and glistening stain.

I staggered over and crouched, reaching out before I could think to stop myself. My fingertips came away dark red and sticky. Tiny shreds of flesh stuck in the blood. Whitestone’s one chance at salvation had been clawing his way out of the room. I’d made the right choice. I’d just arrived too late. With nowhere else to do it, I wiped the remains of Whitestone’s fingers on my pants. From where, then, came the voices? I looked up. From above me. They came from the roof. I was hearing them through the window.

The window was barred. There was no way up from inside the room. Nothing outside in the hall. I headed back to the stairs. At the landing, set back in the shadows was a steel staircase. It led up to a single black door.

At the top step, I tried the handle. Unlocked. Still the door wouldn’t budge. I leaned into it and the door gave but didn’t open. Stuck or blocked. I pushed harder and it gave some more, a few inches. A slice of dim sunlight fell through the crack onto my legs. I put my back to the door and shoved, my bum ankle screaming at me. The door opened just enough for me to squeeze out onto the roof.

I fell over something heavy, whatever it was Danny had used to block the door, landing hard on my hands and knees. I righted myself, brushing my hands on my shirt, and turned to look at what had tripped me. My breath died in my chest. I’d tripped over Al’s dead body, lying facedown at my feet. I stood in the pool of blood seeping from his ruined head. I stumbled out of the puddle, staggering dangerously close to the edge of the roof. I looked over at my brother.

Whitestone, alive, lay crumpled in a fetal position at Danny’s feet. Danny’s gun hung at the end of his limp arm, an afterthought, as if its necessity had passed. He stared at me from behind his sunglasses. “Wow.”

“Let him go,” I said. “Leave him here and come with me.”

“Eventually,” Danny said. “But not yet. I’m not done.”

I walked toward him. He watched me, his head tilted to the side, raising the gun to his shoulder, barrel pointed at the fiery ginger sky.

“Careful, careful,” he said. “What’d our old Spanish teacher used to say?
Cuidado, Señor.”

“You shoot me up here,” I said, “and you either gotta carry me down all those stairs or throw me off the roof.”

At the sound of my voice, Whitestone dropped his bleeding hands from his eyes. The fingertips looked chewed by rats. He turned his head toward me, searching for me by sound like a blind man, both eyes swollen nearly shut. Danny had beaten the shit out of him.

“Kevin?” Whitestone croaked. “Kevin, is that
you
? Oh, thank God.”

Danny kicked him. “Shut the fuck up.” For the first time that day, he sounded angry.

“Police. You brought police.”

I stared at Whitestone, bile rising in my throat. I was disgusted to even hear him speak, to have anything remind me he was human, that he was even the same species as me.

“Well, answer the man,” Danny said. “I kinda need to know myself anyway.”

“No,” I said. Technically, it wasn’t a lie. “No, I didn’t bring the police. I’m not here to save
you
, Whitestone. I could give a fuck about you.” I stepped closer to my brother. “Danny, leave it here. For chrissakes, stop and think. Look at what this is doing to you. Look at what you did to Al.”

With a heavy sigh, Danny glanced over at Al, looking at him like he couldn’t remember how the dead man got there. “Yeah, Al. I feel bad about that.”

“Jesus, Danny. Why?”

“I talked to Bavasi last night after I dropped you at Kelsey’s. He’d called Al off you and Kelsey before we ever got a chance to talk about it. So I got to thinking. Who else lives in Kelsey’s building?”

“Waters,” I said. “The cop.”

Danny tapped the barrel of his gun to his temple. “Indeed. It would make sense.” He shrugged, gazing sadly at Al, as if the dead man was a favorite toy broken beyond repair. “Al knew he was running out of chances with Santoro. He probably thought Waters could save his life.”

“You know this for sure?” I asked. “We’ve known Al half our lives. I thought you owed him.”

“I did ask about Waters,” Danny said, “before, well, you know. Al’s an awful fucking liar, especially when he’s nervous.” He kicked at Whitestone, who pawed at Danny’s shoes.

“They weren’t mine,” Whitestone said.

“So you killed him?” I said.

“Listen to me,” Danny said. “I’m sure he didn’t think it’d be today or that I’d be the one to do it, but Al chose his fate years ago. Al was lucky to last as long as he did. Considering his track record, he lasted longer than he should have. It’s all in how you look at it.”

“They’re not mine,” Whitestone screeched. “They’re for a project.”

Danny kicked him again. Whitestone puked blood and bile onto the rooftop.

“Would you give it up with that shit?” Danny said. He spat on Whitestone’s back. “That’s his excuse. That the pictures were research for some child abuse project. Weak, very weak.”

The idea, that it might be true, perched in my brain. I wished Whitestone had never said it. “Danny, maybe he’s telling the truth.”

“Oh, believe me, I checked and I double-checked. All fucking night looking at that shit.” He whacked Whitestone on the back of the head with the gun. “Could be why I’m so crabby today. You know what I did find in those pictures?” Danny waved me over with the gun. Blood dripped from it. “C’mere, Kevin. We can’t have any more problems with your fucking conscience.”

I walked over. Whitestone had started twitching, his bludgeoned nervous system shorting out. He stank like piss and shit. Shooting him might be an act of mercy.

Danny reached down and snatched up one of Whitestone’s hands, badly twisting the dean’s arm. “This. This is what I found,” Danny yelled, waving the hand at me. “Look!”

I took Whitestone’s limp, slippery right hand in my own. On the back of it was a sloppy ring of old, rubbery cigarette burns. I’d seen those scars before. So had Danny. Not just in Whitestone’s office, but in those awful pictures on Danny’s computer screens. I dropped Whitestone’s hand, disgusted.

“They’re all over him, his back, his chest,” Danny said. “His other hand. Like a fucking disease. Who was it? Momma? Dad? Grandma? How’re your two boys? You mark them up yet?” Crouching over Whitestone, Danny screamed, “Take it like a fucking man! That’s what you always said to the boys, wasn’t it, Doctor?”

Danny stepped back, rolling and spreading his shoulders, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth, not seeming to care that blood and whatever else Whitestone was leaking slicked it to the wrist. He licked his lips. Clumps of black hair fell over Danny’s forehead, dripping sweat onto the lenses of his sunglasses, tripling, quadrupling the twisted images of Whitestone. He reared back and kicked Whitestone again. He raised the gun, pointed it at Whitestone’s skull. “On your feet, Doctor.”

Whitestone rolled around on the roof, trying to either get up or just irritate Danny into shooting him.

This was beyond me. Where the fuck was Kelsey with the cops? God, was I a fool. I’d handed a woman I hardly knew half a million dollars and
told
her to take it home. Yeah, you go ahead, I’ll wait here for the cops. See ya never, sucker. Who in their right mind wouldn’t disappear with that money? I just couldn’t stop fucking up. I was on my own.

Like puffs of smoke, clusters of bats tumbled from the building into the evening air. Looking away from Danny and Whitestone, I realized I didn’t just
smell
something burning, I felt it, waves of heat rising from the sides of the building. “Oh, shit.”

“Yes indeed,” Danny said, smiling, nodding. “The whole fucking shithouse is going up in flames.” He took off his glasses and sailed them off the roof, spinning into the air, punching a hole in the swirling cloud of bats. Confused by the smoke and the overabundance of sunlight, the bats cycled like a tornado over our heads, their numbers growing by the moment. Doctor. Danny kept calling him
Doctor
.

“It’s not him,” I said. “Danny? That’s not Calvin. No matter what he’s done, no matter how bad you want him to be, he’s not Calvin. The family already took care of him, remember?”

“Same monster,” Danny said. “Different skin.”

The air around us rippled with heat. The soles of my shoes got warm.

“You feel that, Doctor?” Danny said. “You feel it?”

Whitestone whimpered. “Dear God . . . dear God . . .”

Danny raised his gun high over his head, brought it down swift and hard into Whitestone’s face. I wouldn’t have thought so but there were bones left to break. I heard them crack.

Danny screamed, “God? God’s gonna save you? You stupid motherfucker. Who do you think fucking
sent
me? All my life I’ve been coming for you.” He grabbed the back of Whitestone’s shirt. “Get your ass up. We finish this, I finish this now.”

Whitestone, his lizard brain transmitting that obedience might still save him, staggered to his feet. Smoke pirouetted in tendrils through cracks in the roof.

“Holy shit, Danny. We gotta go. Leave him, let him burn.”